With reference to the latest incident of the airlines overbooking (UNITED this time). Why would anyone in their right mind ask for volunteers before putting overbooked passengers automatically on standby? Airlines should be able to overbook say 5%-10% to protect themselves against no shows...The current system promotes sheer chaos, and should be done away with post haste!!
Yeah the distinction in this case is that it wasn't that they didn't have enough seats for all the passengers, it's that United was trying to get 4 of it's employees on that flight so they could be on a subsequent one. Given the 2% drop in share price due to this incident, which equates to hundreds of millions of dollars, they could have chartered separate private jets for each employee in question and still not spent a drop in the bucket compared to what this incident has cost them, not to mention the tarnishment of the company brand, in a business as competitive as air travel, that's going to cost them an incalculable amount of money over the long term. I feel like if I can figure that out with some introductory college business classes maybe the CEO and board of directors at United could have figured it out...
I shouldn't even say CEO cause I mean come on Munoz didn't know about it till after, was a failure at middle-ish management most likely.
I saw that entire incident as a display of the dangers of rigid bureaucracy. Some pundit I briefly listened to, ironically in an airport, said something I heard no one else say. He pointed out how this is an example where "no one did anything wrong, yet so much wrong happened". He has a point. The entire event is a sequence of workers simply following their job's procedures. United overbooked, because this is a commonly used practice by airlines. We may disagree with it, but it's common and lawful, and United are not the only ones doing it. United proceeded to ask for volunteers and when they didn't get enough, they ran the lottery on their own. Again, this is part of the lawful procedures currently in place and airlines use it lawfully. Once a passenger refused to get off the plane, the staff again follows procedure and gets law enforcement involved. It does not say in their procedures "If a passenger refuses, cave to them". As law enforcement arrives, they are now operating under law enforcement procedures Dr. Dao is no longer a customer of an airline, but a "suspect" in what is ramping up to be a physical confrontation. Because the passenger is not responding to the law officer's commands to get up, he follows his procedures and applies physical force. The beaten passenger is removed. Obviously, there are several moments prior to the beating, where United could have removed one of their own crew to prevent the incident from escalating further. The point is, they didn't, because each step of the way, everyone was just following rigid and insensitive procedures. Those procedures are what bloodied Dr. Dao that day.
Disagree. Dr. Dao most certainly did wrong by not following a direct order by an airline employee. That is 100% unacceptable. How they handled it however was also wrong. They should have just disembarked the entire plane and not allowed him to reboard. Old school me would have handled it a different way. I remember back when I was playing football, if someone jumped offside during practice, the first time they ran. The second time, they were forced to go get a drink while everyone else ran. There was rarely a 3rd time. So I would had just made the announcement that the plane was not moving until the passenger in seat XX left the plane. Wouldn't have taken long for the other passengers to bully him off the plane.